We’re up all bright and shiny this morning, after partying until 1am last night with celebrities: Amanda Marcotte and Rachel Swirsky stopped by, along with milling hordes of people who burned through our party supplies a little faster (OK, a lot faster) than we expected. We’re making a grocery store run this morning.
Then at 12:30, we’re showing people how to do a simple alcohol extraction of DNA from fresh fruit. At 3:30, I’m off to the Edina room to answer science questions.
Working scientists take time away from their undersea labs and volcano lairs to answer your science questions! Panelists: PZ Myers, Gwen “Bug Girl” Pearson, Steven Theiss, Rachael Acks, Raychelle Burks
At 5, it’s Science vs. Religion in Dystopia, in Atrium 4.
Authors like Philip Pullman, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien have often pitted religion against science, blatantly or through symbolism. How do these authors tilt their respective playing fields? How do their dystopian portrayals of the “other side” compare? Panelists: PZ Myers, Heina Dadabhoy, Emily Finke, Jairus Durnett, Cassandra Phoenix
Then, at 8pm, the party begins once again! I missed you there last night, I hope you can make it now.
Damn, that sounds like a lot of fun.
ummm
fresh fruit = grapes?
alcohol = wine?
???
how is DNA integral to that production????
Steven Novella @27
You have had several reasonable, and reasoned, responses to your somewhat tetchy post which disagree with you. A similarly reasoned reply from you which addresses those responses might show whether you actually have a point or not.
Based on the evidence so far, I’ll go with “not”, but I’m prepared to listen to what you have to say.
Sorry, wrong thread!
re me@2:
reread the blockquote for comprehension. I see now…
[I need to put that here, for my own purposes:
To remind me, later, the comprehensible way to read the OP.]
I can totally imagine how C.S. Lewis and Pullman would pit science and religion against each other. And there is plenty of fantasy and sci-fi that either glorifies or demonizes science and religion. That said, I’m not much of Tolkien expert (heresy, I know), so I don’t know: how did LotR pit science against religion? I know that Tolkien’s world-building was done with his Christianity in mind, but I’m not sure where science really comes into it (does the creation of the Uruk-Hai count as science?).
Sure. To do that they’re burning down the sacred forests and making machines, they’ve got minds of metal or gears or something, they don’t appreciate growth or beauty or blah blah blah. A lot of the backstory with Sauron seems like a parallel to that. I know very little of it, but here are some impressions that I’ve gathered here and there. He started out as a minor deity whose job was basically some kinds of crafting or sciency-techy things like that (as close as this universe gets to science). Things were okay for a while I guess, but being a crafty sort, he came up with his own idea of the way things should be (the way he made them) and tricked others into playing into his little game. That of course didn’t harmonize well with the natural way of existing, since that’s not all Sauron all the time. He should really know his place, all of the other deities/people/whatevers think. So, he basically revolted from the natural order and tried to implement his plans everywhere. Maybe all the death and destruction and so on weren’t really what motivated him originally — if not a scientist or technologist, he was a sort of troubled artist who took things way too far.
That’s why he’s so good at making super-duper rings, if that’s not clear. He was trained by the big guy to excel at that sort of thing, but that didn’t exactly turn out well.
It’s also pretty clear from the Scouring of the Shire chapter that he really, really detested all the changes that were happening in postwar Britain. The whole Shire represents a kind of fuzzy nostalgia for the agrarian Britain that was disappearing in his lifetime. When he thought Science, he thought of the trenches of WWI.
That’s one way to pad the audience O.o
Agreed, that’s a good point, brucegee1962. Maybe he was thinking of industrialists or urban planners or something like that. Sauron as Andrew Carnegie doesn’t feel right somehow…. but scientists shouldn’t be too quick to think of themselves as Carnegies either. So, I don’t think he really had a problem with science or technology generally. It seems accurate to say he had a very Romantic view of nature, like a whole lot of people, and in some odd ways that probably connected with his religious views. There are maybe a few hints that he didn’t think very highly of mechanistic views in physics, but that’s pretty easy to associate with industrialization (if not WWI), which genuinely was a problem for lots of people no matter how Romantic or unrealistic they were about nature or what life was like in the past or whatever.
From my reading I’d say it’s more industry and industrialization as a personified force, with some influences from Axis militarism and “visionary villain” aspirations, than any individual.
re 7,9&11:
agreed. Tolkien was flagrantly anti-technology/industrialization, not anti-science. The heroes were the agrarian Hobbits and the Forest Elves. He only threw in a nod to the British economy by including the Dwarves; as a token.
Tolkien was rightfully aghast at all the ruination industrialization was causing to the agrarian Britain.
He just wrote it as a mythology, inspired by the actual situation, hoping to inspire relief from the direction he envisioned industrialization as bringing doom (personified as Sauron, who controlled volcanoes and aerial bombarders).
ack…
goin all LOTRnerd
*cough*
in summary. Tolkien may have had some instances of religion in LOTR but it was not a metaphor of a conflict of Science v. Religion. He was more clearly Agrian v Industrialization. (as I read it, anyway)
Tolkien was certainly against the misuse of science and technology, but I don’t think you can get anti-science from LotR. The Noldor were scientists if anyone in the books was. They created the palantíri, and the Elven rings of power. Yes, Sauron taught them how to forge the rings, but those three remained incorruptible, and did much good. So, a tool which can be used for good or evil. A rather reasonable view, I’d say.
All of everything you already have, PLUS you are friends with Rachel Swirsky now. Hardly seem far to me…
I meant fair — fair to me.
Damn it, I’m jealous. Really need to find (or help create?) an active actual freethought group in PDX that does events like this once in a while.
PDX_Greg, as I was checking out of the Crystal Hotel a couple months ago, several people came in on their way to the Sunday Assembly. I bet you could find some like minds there.
@14, Rob Grigjanis
This sentence is meaningless. Can you name anyone, except possibly a fictional character, who is for “the misuse of science and technology”? I very much doubt it. The question revolves around what is considered “misuse”. I don’t care for any of Tolkien’s writing, and have successfully avoided having to learn much about him, so I can’t answer the question myself, but it is entirely possible that his view of “misuse of science and technology” included things which are critical, or that his ethical stance was incoherent and self-contradictory.
AND you got Bug Girl’s maybe-actual-name, which I requested in vain when citing her for an ENVS 112 paper…
Long-time-if-intermittent lurker, first time poster, etc.
Hello!
Just leapt out at me that these panels aren’t all dude, all the time, and I found that pleasing. Well done to the CVG2015 organizers.